My entry to the 6x6 Challenge 2017

So, it seems my expectations of getting back to the world of gaming in September were optimistic, and here we are at the last day of the year. This time I am not making a review post. Instead, I will be skipping right to 2017 with the 6x6 Challenge.

I found out today, through Shaun's blog, about the 6x6 Challenge by Kaptain Kobold: pick six games, play each six times through the year and blog about these plays. After months of inactivity, I expect that this provides motivation to get back to some miniature gaming in the next year.

My chosen games are six titles that I have not played yet (or only tested a bit.) Two are not miniature games, but are dedicated solo games:

1) And a Bottle of Rum (Two Hour Wargames): some time ago, I got the bundle with the Free Ports expansion, so this includes all things pirate. Sea battles, exploration, skirmishes, large battles. I have a number of ship tokens and pirate paper miniatures that may be useful.

2) Clash on the Fringe (Nordic Weasel Games): a game about space adventures and exploration, including campaign and solo rules. I wonder how I have not yet played this, since I mostly play sci-fi skirmishes.

3) Mercenary Air Squadron (Victory By Any Means Games): a solo strategy game about leading a group of mercenary pilots, making profits and upgrading equipment. I have meant to play this a few times but always stop at the preparation.

4) Morale Napoleon (Two Hour Wargames): a game of large Napoleonic battles, a bit scary to me as I do not have any experience with that period (and very little experience with historical wargaming.) Still, if things get too complicated, I can play the "alternate universe" card and get things done regardless of proper uniforms!

5) MOTH - The Ion Age (Alternative Armies): a miniature game of sci-fi battles. It comes with its own setting and forces, but seems flexible enough to create variations. It seems to share some rules with USE ME, which is a system I like.

6) Star Trader (Zozer Games): a solo strategy game about managing a trader starship, using the Traveller RPG rules. I read and played a bit with the Traveller rules, and I expect that this game will give some structure to play solo with them.

So that is it, the clock starts ticking in a few hours (in my timezone) and even if I cannot play each of these games six times, trying them all will be great anyway.

Back to the world of gaming!

The last months have been really busy, but now I am finally getting back to miniature gaming. I have a number of Osprey wargames to read (bought in a Bundle of Holding offer), including In Her Majesty's Name and Fistful of Kung Fu.

I have just noticed that Tabletop Simulator now supports figurines with fronts and backs, so I might have yet another use to the large number of paper miniatures I have been buying (and not always printing) over the years.

By the way, I would really love to try it with HTC Vive to see how close it gets to the actual tabletop experience. Has anyone tried it yet?

Fifth year anniversary

Today this blog has been online for five years! For this occasion, I decided to bring a highlight from each year. These are personal choices, not necessarily the posts with most views.

The highlight from 2011 is the Grey City campaign. It was played with custom miniatures and terrain, using the Fear and Faith rules. The battle reports are written from the point of view of the survivors.

From 2012, the highlight is the Circle of Death championship, played with Red Sun Black Moon rules. This was an opportunity to use some really good-looking paper miniatures in their original scale, as I usually do not play in 28mm.

The review of Resistance is Futile (RiF) is my highlight from 2013. This is probably the most detailed game review I have written in this blog, including a good number of playtest games to be able to better discuss the rules.

My highlight from 2014 is the City Patrol battle report. It is a patrol mission played with Chain Reaction 3.1 with a bit of narrative in the report. The reason to pick it up, however, is that it is one of my best-looking reports on the blog.

Lastly, my highlight from 2015 is the solo review of No End In Sight. In this one I was able to discuss the rules and present some test scenarios with a focus on solo play (although it is not a particularly solo-oriented game.)

While looking back at all the posts to select these five, I found other interesting reports, unfinished stories, crazy (or at least vague) rants, and some nice pictures of paper models. Good times :)

Computer-assisted tabletop games

I have been thinking about computer-assisted games. It started with reading some reviews, and then buying the XCOM board game. To play, it is necessary to use an app that manages the alien invaders. At some points, one of the players must input some information about the current board, and at others they must update the board based on the app.

Setting up the team at the beginning of a Breach and Clear mission.

I also have been playing a bit of Breach and Clear on my tablet. This is a "simultaneous turn-based" game. During your turn you plot the movement of a four-man team, and then execute it, while the computer does the same for the opposition. When units enter line of sight, they resolve fire and reaction automatically. It made me wonder how it would feel to have a computer A.I. to direct the opposition in a solo miniatures game. One problem would be how to allow the computer to keep track of the board. Ideally, you might be able to point your phone's camera at the board and just label the relevant elements for it to track, but that involves some hard image processing.

An easier solution would be to play on a grid, with some means to inform the computer about the initial table setup and movements. Still, I am not sure if the work involved (e.g. updating the position of each of your units) would be worth to get a more effective solo opponent.

On the other hand, there are at least two solo A.I.s for X-Wing Minature Game with computer implementations (this one, which I found on BoardgameGeek, and this app, which implements the Tyneside Wargames Club solo rules.) As players must choose the maneuver for their ships before they are resolved, the end result is a bit similar to the experience in Breach and Clear. However, in both of these A.I.s each ship is controlled separately, with no squadron tactics.

There is another question on this topic, about the usefulness of apps in board games, not for solo play (e.g. XCOM, Alchemists.) However, at this point I am more interested in the cost vs. benefit of adding an app to solo miniature games.

The year in review

At the end of last year I had a post reviewing 2014 and making plans. Now that 2015 is almost done, how did I fare?

This is just a recycled image that for some reason I thought would fit with this post.

One post per week: if we say it is one post per week on average, or 52 posts a year, then this goal was reached, much because I focused on posting more on the blog during October-December, after an inactive period.

Moving to virtual tabletops: this did not really happen. I did not make a real effort to convert to virtual tabletops and most of my battle reports for this year were still on a real table. That said, with the added possibility of having to move to a smaller house, I will keep this goal for 2016.

Thorough, solo play-focused reviews: a partially completed goal. Over the year I only wrote a few more involved reviews (No End in Sight, Fernewelt, War Story) but I guess I could have covered a few more games.

More solo RPG sessions: other than Fernewelt, I did not really try any RPG systems during the year, so this goal was not reached. This is another goal I intend to keep for 2016.

So this is it for now. I intend to take a break from all things computer-related, especially blogs and social networking during the holidays, so expect new updates in January.

Thoughts on playing miniature games solo

Back in the first year of this blog, I wrote a little about how miniature skirmish games could be played solo. It was mostly a way to organize my thoughts on the subject, as I learned about new games and discovered other blogs discussing this.

These days I started thinking about it again -- maybe because the year is drawing to a close and thus my mind is sorting all the messy ideas floating around. So here is a slightly different take on that discussion: not limited to skirmish games and not trying to outline all possibilities. Instead, what follows is a presentation of how I have been playing solo miniature games.

Procedural narrative or "roll the dice and interpret the result"
Many of my solo games (most of them?) consist in a scenario with set objectives for the forces and rules to generate unexpected events (for instance 5150 Urban Renewal.) The fun lies in having this randomness add elements to the initial situation, and the narrative takes precedence over tactics. This category also includes games with limited tactical choices but strong narrative generators (for instance, Red Sun Black Moon.)

Scenario exploration or "play both sides of a weird setup"
Some of my games involve uneven or strange forces, or an atypical board setup. In these situations, I play both sides to the best of my ability, possibly with some random generator to add uncertainty. This is the case for most of my games of Song of Blades and Heroes, because it allows the creation of varied warbands. My recent Battle for Zorpel campaign using Five Core also falls in this category.

Automated opposition or "look up table X for the answer"
Some of my games are actually played against an artificial opponent, trying to use tactics to win the battle, usually with odds stacked against my forces. These mainly include the military-themed games from Two Hour Wargames, although the A.I. for X-Wing also works well.

What about force disposition systems (as found in USE ME and Five Core, for instance)? I have found in my games that they are useful to keep the enemy force's decisions consistent, However, I still have to make enough decisions for both sides that the games end up in either of the first two categories.

The same goes for card-driven activation, random activation rolls, random event tables and other similar mechanics: they add welcome uncertainty but in the end, decisions still must be made for both sides, such that the fun must (in my experience) lie in narrative or "what if" scenarios.

That is not to say there is anything wrong with playing with a focus on narrative, and I think this works well for the battle reports. However, it is something to keep in mind when I am planning my future campaigns.

300 posts!

With the post from tuesday, this blog reached the mark of 300 published posts, in a little less than five years! I will leave a summary of post contents and frequency to the end of the year (or maybe the next anniversary of the blog.)

For the curious, post #100 was Trick or Treat, a halloween scenario for Song of Blades and Heroes, published in October 2011. Post #200 was a short first-impressions review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey board game by Reiner Knizia, in July 2013. The longer intervals between each hundred posts are a consequence of the decreasing post frequency... hopefully, post #400 will not take so long!

Full Thrust (Lite)

Just a quick update: today I finally had my first test game of Full Thrust, using the "lite" version, which uses a simpler movement system and only features lasers and energy torpedoes. I made some very simple starship counters and a turning tool to help maneuvering.

Surprisingly, the game worked pretty well on a 90cm x 60cm table, even measuring ranges in inches. Granted, there were only three ships on each side (two light cruisers and one heavy cruiser.) This made maneuvering very important and combat quite deadly, as the ships were often close and thus able to fire all weapons at top power.

I will leave a "first impressions" to another time, after I have played the full rules. So far, I can see why this game remains popular among those who like space combat games.

Fantasy miniatures made in Brazil

A new crowdfunding campaign has been launched here in Brazil for a fantasy skirmish game and accompanying miniatures. The creators are Riachuelo Games, a small local company that has been making wargames and miniatures in small production scales for a while. Here is a teaser video that shows some of the miniatures and sculpts:

The Fields of Gore system is relatively simple, at least in the preview rules that have been released (files here, in portuguese only.) Game turns are split into Initiative, Action and Combat phases. The Action phase is split in three sub-phases: movement, ranged attacks and spellcasting. The order of these is determined by the player who won initiative. In each phase (and sub-phase), one player acts with all their miniatures before passing control to the next one. Combat resolution usually involves rolling two dice. For ranged attacks, one die is used for a to-hit check, while the dice total (in both melee and ranged) is used to check armor penetration. Basic units have a single hit point, while some heavy units and heroes have more.

This is something big around here. Currently, modern board games are becoming more popular, and local companies are releasing new games and translated imports. If this campaign is successful, it might spark more interest in miniature gaming too.

Surprise update!

I get home from work... what's this, a box from the USA?

Could it be... yes! My copy of Torn Armor has arrived!

High quality components and plastic insert :)

This is just one of the eight two-sided poster maps included with the game.

I am really happy this has arrived. After the problems with the plastic miniatures, the project has moved ahead and it is so cool to see it materialized. I certainly do not have issues with playing with paper miniatures and if/when the plastic ones come out, it will be a great bonus.

I will try to post some first impressions about the game soon. Given that the game is heavily scenario-driven, it might work well solo.

Rules for space combat?

While taking a look at my collection of rules, I have noticed two things. I have, over time, drifted towards modern/sci-fi skirmish, although when I started looking for miniature games I would get all sorts: fantasy, historical, sci-fi, skirmish, large scale...

Also, I have not played most (maybe none at all) of the starship combat rules in my collection. I think this is due, in part, to my insistence in trying to play them with miniatures and a game mat, while the poor results of my previous attempts put me off.

Having decided to use the virtual tabletop more often, I have already set up a map to start trying 5150 Fighter Command, using Wydraz starship counters and one of Dave Graffam's space battle maps.

Besides 5150 Fighter Command, here are the other space combat rules that I have, in alphabetical order:

Astral Empires: Nova Command
Astral Empires: Battleshift
Full Thrust
Starmada: the Admiralty Edition
Stellar Evolution
Tractus Bellica
USE ME Starship Battles
Warcosm

Does anyone have comments about them, suggestions about which ones to try first or even suggestions about other space combat games worth a look?

Friday the 13th Solo Gaming

Today someone started a discussion about games that go well with Friday the 13th, in a Facebook group about board games that I follow. This spurred me to revisit some solo games related to the horror theme.

The first was good ol' Zombie in my Pocket, one of the first print and play games I have built. I had not played it in a while and surprisingly, I got my second victory ever! Here is the final game state: just one development card before game over, and saved from the four zombies (as I had only 3 health) by the oil + candle combination! I would rather have this kind of luck on the lottery but anyway... fun game.

The second was Dice of the Living Dead, another print and play game. I reached about 2/3 of the way to salvation, when my last (infected) survivor succumbed to a zombie attack. I was also pretty low on supplies and ammo.

Lastly, I played Elder Sign, pitting investigator Amanda Sharpe against Great Cthulhu... in the end, the ancient one awakened when I needed only one more elder sign (out of 13) to seal it off. As expected, she was defeated in battle, losing all sanity and almost all stamina. On the bright side, besides almost winning, I went through the whole game with a single investigator.

Some may argue that Friday 13th has more to do with bad luck than horror. Solo games often have a strong random element (to keep things unpredictable) and this is surely true of these three, so they match the day's theme in this case too.

Post-apocalyptic party

Last week this blog completed four years of existence (and I will save you from comments about how time flies...) Since the first post was a battle report of a Mutants and Death Ray Guns game, and it has been some time since I played it, I decided to start a small campaign. This time I will be using the revised edition, released last year. Although it now officially incorporates a points system, I will stick to the randomized unit creation.

My warband is a "purity squad," being comprised only of humans. They get one less figure than other warbands but have better odds of getting good skills, and start with more equipment.

Instead of drawing the figures, this time I used some 15mm ones that I already had, trying to match them to the rolled characters.

From left to right, they are: Jennifer [Q3+ C2, Slippery, 1 pistol, 1 defoliant grenade], Claude [Q3+ C3, Savage, 1 powered sword, 1 psionicilline], Kate [Q3+ C2, HtH Specialist, javelins], Steve [Q3+ C2, Sharpshooter, 1 frag grenade, 1 pistol]. The band also has 9 food points and 11 energy cells.

The setting
This group is one of the raiding teams of a human settlement ruled by "King" Harlan. Raiding teams venture into the radioactive wasteland, fighting mutants to secure valuable resources. Successful teams gain fame in the settlement and favor with the king, so that is their main motivation.

Besides that, each of the characters has their own motivation. Jennifer is crazy for ancient artifacts and will do anything to secure them. Claude hates mutants and finds it difficult to focus on a mission if he has not defeated at least one yet. Kate believes she could be a good leader for the team. For this reason, she will often try to lead them into battle. Steve is (secretly) in love with Kate, so he will try to show off and protect her.

Campaign rules

I will use the campaign rules as presented in the rule book, but the opposition will be a randomly rolled mutant warband for each scenario. The group will have to face five different, randomly rolled scenarios, at a rate of one per week in game time, for upkeep purposes. Campaign victory requires three scenario wins and at least one of the original characters (Jennifer, Claude, Kate or Steve) survives the five games.

Tabletop games and Computer games

I started thinking about this post after my dungeon crawl in Tabletop Simulator. More specifically, I was surprised to find myself thinking of actually manipulating the pieces, although they were only virtual models. I attribute this to the physics simulation (collision detection and simulation of mass) implemented in that software.

At the same time, there are all the computer versions of board games that have been released lately, for computers and tablets. Differently from Tabletop Simulator, they tend to offer a user interface that mediates the manipulation of the game pieces. This article from Edge already discussed those conversions and some implications to the market.

Lastly, this post on Delta Vector got me back to thinking about why I play tabletop war games. That is, since I play mostly solo, why not stick to the vast offer of real-time and turn-based strategy games on the PC? I have written a bit about it before, and my argument was centered on the experience of playing a tabletop game. However, part #3 of the argument (the pleasure of implementation) was weakened by my experience with Tabletop Simulator.

All this led me to ask two questions:
1) Is there something that tabletop war games offer that computer strategy games cannot match?
2) Is it possible to predict that tabletop war games will be converted to digital versions in the near future, much like board games?

Zombicide and solo scenarios

Today I spent some hours playing Zombicide and this got me thinking about solo tabletop gaming scenarios.

One problem that solo games must address is providing challenge for the players, and the solution often comes in the form of unpredictability. In the case of Zombicide, for instance, there are the card decks for zombies and items.

However, there is also the issue of setting up the game, that is, giving context to the action that is about to happen. Many rule sets have generic scenarios (i.e. attack or defend) and some have scenario generators. While useful, these often lack in depth or leave too many details for the player to fill.

This can be a problem for solo gaming, as setting the terrain in a mindful manner implies thinking about the tactics that can be used there. It can work if you want to explore different tactical situations in a given board. If you want to be able to play against the rules, it can feel as you have an unfair advantage.

One possible solution is to look for scenarios built by other people on the Internet. The problem is that in many cases, these will require miniatures, models or terrain that the player does not have.

The interesting thing about Zombicide is that, being a board game with a definite set of components, it is easier to share scenarios created for it. The official site has over 40 scenarios just for the base game and even an application to aid creating new ones.

I do not have any concrete proposals at the moment for this. On one hand, I enjoy the freedom given by tabletop games, i.e. I can set up a board with anything at hand. However, at times I may be stumped at creating any scenario, or may make one that is too favorable for one side.

In the end, I think that the relevant question is: how are other tabletop gamers creating their scenarios for play?

Shadow of Mordor

The reason this blog has not been updated for a while is this:

For the past two weeks, most (if not all) my hobby time was poured into Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. When it was released, I dismissed it as another Assassin's Creed or Batman game, only using some of Tolkien's source material. Following some very positive comments by friends, I decided to try it and the game is really good.

Surely, there is free-flowing combat and exploration like the other mentioned games. However, the world behaves dynamically, changing based on (some of) your actions. One way this happens is through the "nemesis" system. If you get killed by an orc, he raises in power. Go after him for revenge and he mocks and taunts you for your previous defeat. On the other hand, some orcs you kill come back, with scars and new abilities based on how you dispatched them.

The orcs also practice their violence-based politics and you can interfere in those: jump into a duel between two orc captains, prevent them from recruiting more orcs and so on. Leave them alone and some will rise in power and defeat their rivals.

Anyway, I completed the main storyline during the weekend, and while I will probably explore the game a bit more, blog activity should also resume soon.

Crafting a set of 15mm zombie survival miniatures

I am in the process of coloring an updated set of zombie survival 15mm miniatures, based on the ones I made for the Grey City campaign. I have added some police miniatures and adjusted the scale, so that they are around 16.5mm from head to foot.

If all goes well, I should release them later this week...

Blog updates and Papercut Awards

Just a quick update. A few weeks ago I started reorganizing this blog, as it is almost five years old. First I cleaned up the tags so that they would serve as subject categories for the posts, rather than keywords. I am not 100% happy with the way they are now, but I believe they work better than my previous cluttered word cloud. After that, I changed the order and configuration of some of the sections on the right side of the page, hopefully making navigation a bit easier.

Today I have added a new "Downloads" page to organize the downloads of paper figures and models that I have created along these years. These include posts made in this blog and those in the Cardboard Warriors forum. I still have to add a bunch of links. This will include some new figures in the 15mm survivors line, following some inquiries by Ivan Worthington.

Moving on to another subject, voting for the Papercut Awards 2014 has ended and so it is now possible to see the winners in each category. Participating in three categories (single figure, model and mixed media dioramas) was great, both as a challenge to different skill sets and as a contribution to the papercraft community.

Grabbing 4th place in the mixed media dioramas was a bit of a surprise for me, considering the high quality of all entries. Setting up those shots and trying to make good-looking pictures was very fun.

I had mixed feelings for a while, for landing the 3rd place in the models category. After all, we had only three entries, meaning I would grab the 3rd prize anyway. However, I got 16 votes from a total of 43 voters, meaning more than one third of them thought my model was worth 1st or 2nd place -- each voter could pick one or two models in this category. Besides, I cannot be blamed for the lack of additional entries, and mine was the first to be submitted.

It is also interesting to notice the importance of photography in the contest: three of the top five "Best in Show" were entries to the diorama categories (although one of them involved designs that were created specifically for the contest.)

This is what I had to say about this year's awards. Eric 'Squirmydad' Brown said he will compile all entries as downloads -- and there are some really awesome ones. I am particularly interested in building the townsfolk vs. undead battle set.

There and back (to 15mm) again

Today I got to take a look at terrain and figures I had printed and built. There was a bunch of 28mm scale figures that I still use occasionally. Then there were some figures, tiles and buildings at 15mm scale and others at around 10mm, to play measuring 1 centimeter = 1 inch. Now, the problem is that those are incompatible (i.e. look bad along each other) and keeping both ends up being wasteful.

So taking a look at figures printed at both scales, it became obvious to me (considering my tastes, expectations and available printer, mind you) that the ones in 15mm scale looked better. So it is that I decided to abandon my plans of using the smaller minis, and to go back to 15mm scale, whether it is to play at that size or halving distances and ranges when playing rules meant for 28mm figures.

Following that, I spent a good portion of the day making more tiles and flat-folding buildings that I can use to play modern, sci-fi and zombie games. After that, I want to convert some Finger and Toe buildings to flat-folding versions that I can use in post-apocalyptic games.

Building some print and play games

It is print and play time again! I intend to use some time during my vacation to build paper models and games. For now I have started with three easily buildable projects, all of them solo boardgames:

Jasper and Zot, a nice and portable solo board game that won a BoardGameGeek contest in 2011 for print and play games that fit in a single sheet.

Dice of the Living Dead, a solo zombie survival game that can be played with just the single-page board and eight dice.

Island of D 2: The Shadow of Dawn, a clever solo adventure that uses only cards, not dice for all the random elements and conflict resolution.